Has anybody used the Retirement Spending Calculator on the MarketWatch website ??

Fidelity's Retirement Income Planner gave me good results based on real numbers, and I wanted a sanity check using MarketWatch's calculator. MW's input doesn't let you adjust for your true spending in Retirement (at least as far as I can find on their calculator). They simply put in a number for Housing, Medical, Transportation, etc. Their assumptions for Housing in my case are way off -- it's not going to be $11,335, but much less (mortgage is paid off, taxes less than $2K, and minimal maintenance). Their Transportation spending includes a car loan or lease payment (N/A in our case).

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What would a retirement spending calculator do? I'd just build a spreadsheet, auto-increase the baseline spending for inflation (utilities, food, set-aside/escrow account for big expenses like cars, roof, etc), add/subtract any non-linear expenses (e.g. end of mortgage, start/stop payments for college, etc). A column for each year, then look at the totals at the bottom. I guess you could get fancy and build a chart with the results.
If you use the same inflation assumption as used in your acrual model (FIRECalc, etc) it will make the most sense.
Or, forget about inflation and do your accrual model in terms of real growth, use constant dollars. That makes things more intuitive in the outyears (to my way of thinking).

Yes, that's the one on MW. Surprisingly lazy programming there, not allowing the user to set some key parameters like housing and cars.

I've used Firecalc and ******** with encouraging results. I just like playing with the numbers. Looks like I'm good. I have to be mindful when the RMD's start kicking in that I'm not boosted into a higher bracket.

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I basically ignored the housing part, knowing that it was over estimating, as I was more interested in the top line.
It would be better if you could set this value.

I did like the ability to set the inflation and return rates of various factors.

I'm a bit confused about this calculator, I punched in the numbers with a retirement age of 56 (which for me is next year) and it said that I couldn't (or shouldn't) retire until 67. Then after looking through the the tabs, it has me spending almost twice my salary the first couple of years. Can't figure out why??

Any ideas?

I think I agree with original poster, I can't imagine how useful this tool is.

when I run my numbers on firecalc, I get a 98% chance of not running out of money for 34 years (age 90%). I did include my social security in the firecalc benefits.

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